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A St. Petersburg woman says a police officer beat and sexually assaulted her for hours after she reported being raped

Source: Meduza

Warning: This article contains profanity and descriptions of sexual violence.

Irina, a St. Petersburg resident, has accused an officer at Police Station No. 14 in the city’s Frunzensky District of abuse, beatings, and sexual violence.

It began on October 10, when she filed a police report alleging rape. According to Irina, the day before, she had agreed to visit a man she had met a while earlier through the Daivinchik dating bot. She had occasionally messaged with him, mostly about soccer. Two other people were at the apartment: the host’s brother and a friend of his. Two of the men are police academy cadets, including the man she accuses of rape.

The men and Irina “drank, chatted, and played cards.” “Everyone got pretty drunk, including me,” Irina wrote on Telegram. She said she had no money for a taxi home, so she decided to stay until public transportation started running.

Irina alleges that the host took advantage of her incapacitated state and had unprotected sex with her, without her affirmative consent. “He took advantage of the situation — basically, the fact that I was so drunk I could barely move or say anything,” Irina wrote.

Then, she said, the host took her outside, said, “The stop’s over there. Bye,” and went back inside. Irina went home and slept all day, then went to the police the following day to report the rape. The police accepted her report, although one female officer told her that “it was her own fault, that she should have had the sense to avoid getting into situations like that.” Irina said she spent at least two hours at the station. An acquaintance who had accompanied her was sent home after being told, “This is going to take a while.”

Irina returned home, but about two hours later, the police called and told her she needed to come back to add to her report and undergo a medical examination. According to Irina, the officers refused to let her wait until the next day and came to pick her up and take her to the station.

Mediazona reported that leaked data links the phone number used to call her to Nikita Severov. Phone directory apps list him as an investigator in the Admiralteysky District.

Irina alleges that one of the officers at the station began abusing her. He repeatedly made her strip down “to her socks,” grabbed her by the hair, threw her to the floor, jumped up and down on her, slammed her head “against whatever was there,” and “touched her all over while hitting her.” He threatened to “fuck” her, suggested they “sleep together,” forced her to her knees and moved her face toward his crotch, and said that “all girls like pain.” According to Irina, the officer said that “the Investigative Committee wouldn’t believe her, and neither would anyone else.”

At one point, Irina said, the man she accuses of rape was also brought to the station. He, too, was hit several times, and the officer said, “Two fuckheads couldn’t settle something, and now I’ve got to sit here all night dealing with it.” According to Irina, the officer demanded that they “reconcile,” after which the man she accuses of rape offered her money. She refused.

Other officers watched, including Nikita, whose surname Irina did not give in her post. “He said I was ruining the guy’s life and that he would kick me to death right there,” Irina told Mediazona.

She told the outlet that when she arrived at the station, she was told she would be speaking with the station chief. On Telegram, Irina wrote that the officer who abused her “didn’t introduce himself.”

According to Irina, the abuse lasted four to five hours. She published tracking data from the 2GIS app showing that she was at the police station from 12:42 a.m. to 5:45 a.m.

Afterward, Irina hurriedly left St. Petersburg and flew to Kamchatka, where her family lives. She published her first Telegram post about what had happened while she was already on her way. In Kamchatka, Irina sought medical attention and was diagnosed with a closed traumatic brain injury and bruising of the soft tissues of her head. She also reported the incident to the Investigative Committee’s office in Yelizovo, Kamchatka Krai. According to Irina, investigators there told her they would “send everything to St. Petersburg, since that’s where it happened.”

In another post on October 21, Irina indicated that before going to the police, she had told someone she had been in contact with for two years about the rape, and he “decided to take advantage of the situation and started trying to extort money from that guy.” Irina maintains that she stopped the extortion attempts, but the police learned about them. (Her post indicates that the officers examined the messages on her phone, including those she sent after her first visit to the station.) According to Irina, the police deleted the messages in which she tried to dissuade her acquaintance from extorting money, but an archived copy of the conversation survived. When she told this person that she had been beaten because of his extortion, Irina said, he cut off contact with her.

As of publication, no official inquiry into St. Petersburg’s Police Station No. 14 had been announced. Journalists from the news outlet Bumaga reached the station chief by phone. He said the Investigative Committee was looking into what had happened overnight on October 10–11. The station chief categorically denied any involvement in the abuse of Irina. Investigative Committee officials in Yelizovo told Irina that the committee’s St. Petersburg office had taken an interest in the case and that she had been summoned for an interview.

In comments to Mediazona, the Team Against Torture, which helps victims of police violence, described the abuse Irina reported as “the height of cruelty.” “We can’t remember the last time we saw violence this severe in St. Petersburg or elsewhere in Russia,” the human rights advocates said.